7 ms·

Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

27 points by matthewphiong 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago
Why do work visas even have to cost this much? I understand US is going through a job crisis, but I fear it's getting too protectionist. Protectionism never has good results in the long term.
- mseebach 14y ago
  So, what's being proposed here is a tax on fairly rich people who can't vote. For "should", it shouldn't cost anything, or, at least, not more than a turist visa (I think ETSA is something like $14). There is some sense in the idea that the native population should be protected against unfair competition, but there is no evidence that this is the issue - Microsoft (and many other tech companies) legitimately can't fill these jobs, so there's literally no downside to opening the floodgates [of eligible H1-Bs].
  - wheelerwj 14y ago
    i don't know how they can't fill these jobs. There are 12 million people out of work, you telling me MS can't figure out a win-win solution?
    - mseebach 14y ago
      Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your assertion.
      - wheelerwj 14y ago
        how did you arrive at that? are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.
        JumpCrisscross 14y ago
        This implies it would be profitable for you to loan these people $40 to $50k to get this training and then (a) profit off the loans and (b) turn around and sell the finished product (the upgraded workforce) to Microsoft. It's the logic of subprime houses for subprime people (or, more sensitively, the diamond in the rough mindset).
        mseebach 14y ago
        > are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? You brought up the fact that there are 12 million workless, as a counter to Microsoft's desire to hire H1-B labor. If that's not to suggest they could fill those positions, what's the relevancy? > Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead. Uhm, 40-50k a year is more expensive than full-time Harvard tuition. That does change the argument a little bit.
        wheelerwj 14y ago
        cool, so MS can send 6000 people to harvard for a CS degree while having them work on some menial code/internship in the mean time.
        mseebach 14y ago
        Yes, that's at least 12 times more expensive then the $10k.
        wheelerwj 14y ago
wheelerwj 14y ago
this is total bs. MS has a massive work force of contract workers who are paid poorly and get treated worse and i am pretty certain that other companies do the same. If they took that 10k ($60m usd total)bounty and applied it to legit training in the US they would have a better, cheaper, and more loyal workforce and the money would stay local. This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while I am all in favor or the immigration of foreign skill/knowledge/work ethic into the US, to call it a 'crisis' is nothing more than a publicity stunt to pull attention away from the fact that they are outsourcing jobs when they could be paying that money into the local economies.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  I worked at a bank. We needed a team of six people with advanced and specific skills. We could only find four. We tried to import two more. Computer at immigration said no. So we cancelled the offer to the four and hired six in Singapore. That unit has now grown to twenty-five of which five had to be pulled in from India. That's how reality works.
- salem 14y ago
  The reality is, if they are low-pay contractors, they are probably not in possession of skills that would make them worth the cost and risk of hiring full time. Labor laws protecting less in-demand workers is another issue all together.
checoivan 14y ago
On the upside there are more visas, the side effect is it makes it harder for early startups to hire H1Bs due to the increased cost. 10K for the H1 plus 15K for the green card. Usually both are done together or really close since you need a green card application in place to extend an H1 past 6 years. That's 25K per employee only for processing vs ~ 2K today.
toyg 14y ago
A one-off $10K fee per hire is chump change, compared to the alternative: if your H1-B costs 50K per year + 10K one-off, he's still much cheaper than a US-based developer who wants 60K per-year -- and that's not exactly the top going rate. Corporations understand Marx much better than workers ever did.
- SeckinJohn 14y ago
  It is not legal to underpay H1Bs. They literally should not be able to fill those positions with Americans if they are complaining about this.
  - toyg 14y ago
    I'm curious to know which sort of rocket science Microsoft does that is not taught at US universities. Of course they are unable to fill positions at a given salary level. It's quite hard to find tomato-pickers at slave-like wages.
    - blinkingled 14y ago
      How many Comp Sci or related discipline students do the US universities graduate every year? How much is the demand? How many of those graduates are from other countries and need VISA to work? How do you know what skills Microsoft needs and why do you assume they pay slave wages?
    - barrkel 14y ago
      I don't think you're fully informed. Sometimes it's difficult to get qualified applicants at all, at any salary level. A lot of developers are more interested in the specifics of the job, product, company etc. than the salary (once it meets a certain minimum floor); and for other jobs, the specific knowledge and experience needed is very scarce. If there are 20 people qualified for a job and 21 open positions, no salary level is going to fill all the positions. I had a H-1B visa once upon a time, but I never moved to the US. The company wanted me to, but I preferred London to Santa Cruz. Didn't stop me working for the company remotely, paid out of their UK sales office. Now I don't know what proportion of H-1Bs are like that - a global search to fill a local position - but it's definitely non-zero. (The reason I'm pushing back on this is because I don't want HN to be a happy home for the same sad sack of devs Slashdot hosted when I last frequented there some years ago; "dey took our jerbs" was a constant refrain any time H-1B came up.)
beedogs 14y ago
It's utterly fucked how restrictive and exploitative the US immigration system really is. It cost me about $5000 of my own money and a year and a half of my own time to become a permanent resident of Australia, with no advanced degree and no cash reserve needed. That route is literally impossible for potential U.S. immigrants. You either have to marry your way in, play the greencard lottery, have a PhD, or buy your way in via an investor-class visa. The alternative, if you can get one, is an H1-B visa that ties you to a single employer who's free to take full advantage of your situation for half a decade. And this is what Microsoft wants more of.
- seppo0010 14y ago
  The H1-B is not tied to a single employer. But it only allows one month in case of lay off.
  - malandrew 14y ago
    IMHO the H1-B visa should have a scheme like allowing 3 months for every every year worked. Since many tech jobs are filled for 2-4 years, that would give people 6-12 months to find something new. Out of curiosity, how much does it cost a company to takeover an existing visa?
  - akurilin 14y ago
    Aren't there restrictions on switching companies once your GC application has been filed?
    - seppo0010 14y ago
      > If a foreign worker in H-1B status quits or is dismissed from the sponsoring employer, the worker must either apply for and be granted a change of status to another non-immigrant status, find another employer (subject to application for adjustment of status and/or change of visa), or leave the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
  - ashayh 14y ago
dschiptsov 14y ago
How many years could pass, until they will figure out and develop a the same development process that brings Linux kernel and other wonders to us - a collaboration of engineers around the globe? But wait, that means all you need is gcc, emacs, git sometimes ssh and internet connection and Paypall (sic.) account? How could they sell all that disconnected from reality, bloated crap they produce, spending billions per year? The answer is quite easy - in order to get 200+k salaries and bonuses managers must maintain this bloated hierarchy and fabric-style sweatshops. Otherwise, who needs them? But the real question is - why we still care about MS? Who cares about old Nokia phones or Delphi or Java or things like Novell Netware?))
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
All the political chestbeating -protecting America against foreign labor - seems pretty silly when discussing skilled jobs like software. Its like, you're in a lifeboat and trying to get to shore and 3 rowers short. People are clamoring to get into your boat - first thing, you ask them what country they're from? WTF? Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program. Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers. Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but this conversation keeps coming up.
malandrew 14y ago
What do people think about making companies pay a significant premium salary (25%) to H1-B visa holders over US citizens? Seems like this would allay concerns over companies using H1-B visas to keep salaries down. Basically companies would use H1-B visas when an equivalent people cannot be hired domestically. If this approach works then maybe eliminating caps is possible, since it should be a somewhat self-correcting system.

27 points by matthewphiong 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago

Why do work visas even have to cost this much? I understand US is going through a job crisis, but I fear it's getting too protectionist. Protectionism never has good results in the long term.

mseebach 14y ago
So, what's being proposed here is a tax on fairly rich people who can't vote. For "should", it shouldn't cost anything, or, at least, not more than a turist visa (I think ETSA is something like $14). There is some sense in the idea that the native population should be protected against unfair competition, but there is no evidence that this is the issue - Microsoft (and many other tech companies) legitimately can't fill these jobs, so there's literally no downside to opening the floodgates [of eligible H1-Bs].
- wheelerwj 14y ago
  i don't know how they can't fill these jobs. There are 12 million people out of work, you telling me MS can't figure out a win-win solution?
  - mseebach 14y ago
    Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your assertion.
    - wheelerwj 14y ago
      how did you arrive at that? are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.
      - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
        This implies it would be profitable for you to loan these people $40 to $50k to get this training and then (a) profit off the loans and (b) turn around and sell the finished product (the upgraded workforce) to Microsoft. It's the logic of subprime houses for subprime people (or, more sensitively, the diamond in the rough mindset).
      - mseebach 14y ago
        > are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? You brought up the fact that there are 12 million workless, as a counter to Microsoft's desire to hire H1-B labor. If that's not to suggest they could fill those positions, what's the relevancy? > Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead. Uhm, 40-50k a year is more expensive than full-time Harvard tuition. That does change the argument a little bit.
        wheelerwj 14y ago
        cool, so MS can send 6000 people to harvard for a CS degree while having them work on some menial code/internship in the mean time.
        mseebach 14y ago
        Yes, that's at least 12 times more expensive then the $10k.
        wheelerwj 14y ago

wheelerwj 14y ago

this is total bs. MS has a massive work force of contract workers who are paid poorly and get treated worse and i am pretty certain that other companies do the same. If they took that 10k ($60m usd total)bounty and applied it to legit training in the US they would have a better, cheaper, and more loyal workforce and the money would stay local. This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while I am all in favor or the immigration of foreign skill/knowledge/work ethic into the US, to call it a 'crisis' is nothing more than a publicity stunt to pull attention away from the fact that they are outsourcing jobs when they could be paying that money into the local economies.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago
I worked at a bank. We needed a team of six people with advanced and specific skills. We could only find four. We tried to import two more. Computer at immigration said no. So we cancelled the offer to the four and hired six in Singapore. That unit has now grown to twenty-five of which five had to be pulled in from India. That's how reality works.
salem 14y ago
The reality is, if they are low-pay contractors, they are probably not in possession of skills that would make them worth the cost and risk of hiring full time. Labor laws protecting less in-demand workers is another issue all together.

checoivan 14y ago

On the upside there are more visas, the side effect is it makes it harder for early startups to hire H1Bs due to the increased cost. 10K for the H1 plus 15K for the green card. Usually both are done together or really close since you need a green card application in place to extend an H1 past 6 years. That's 25K per employee only for processing vs ~ 2K today.

toyg 14y ago

A one-off $10K fee per hire is chump change, compared to the alternative: if your H1-B costs 50K per year + 10K one-off, he's still much cheaper than a US-based developer who wants 60K per-year -- and that's not exactly the top going rate. Corporations understand Marx much better than workers ever did.

SeckinJohn 14y ago
It is not legal to underpay H1Bs. They literally should not be able to fill those positions with Americans if they are complaining about this.
- toyg 14y ago
  I'm curious to know which sort of rocket science Microsoft does that is not taught at US universities. Of course they are unable to fill positions at a given salary level. It's quite hard to find tomato-pickers at slave-like wages.
  - blinkingled 14y ago
    How many Comp Sci or related discipline students do the US universities graduate every year? How much is the demand? How many of those graduates are from other countries and need VISA to work? How do you know what skills Microsoft needs and why do you assume they pay slave wages?
  - barrkel 14y ago
    I don't think you're fully informed. Sometimes it's difficult to get qualified applicants at all, at any salary level. A lot of developers are more interested in the specifics of the job, product, company etc. than the salary (once it meets a certain minimum floor); and for other jobs, the specific knowledge and experience needed is very scarce. If there are 20 people qualified for a job and 21 open positions, no salary level is going to fill all the positions. I had a H-1B visa once upon a time, but I never moved to the US. The company wanted me to, but I preferred London to Santa Cruz. Didn't stop me working for the company remotely, paid out of their UK sales office. Now I don't know what proportion of H-1Bs are like that - a global search to fill a local position - but it's definitely non-zero. (The reason I'm pushing back on this is because I don't want HN to be a happy home for the same sad sack of devs Slashdot hosted when I last frequented there some years ago; "dey took our jerbs" was a constant refrain any time H-1B came up.)

beedogs 14y ago

It's utterly fucked how restrictive and exploitative the US immigration system really is. It cost me about $5000 of my own money and a year and a half of my own time to become a permanent resident of Australia, with no advanced degree and no cash reserve needed. That route is literally impossible for potential U.S. immigrants. You either have to marry your way in, play the greencard lottery, have a PhD, or buy your way in via an investor-class visa. The alternative, if you can get one, is an H1-B visa that ties you to a single employer who's free to take full advantage of your situation for half a decade. And this is what Microsoft wants more of.

seppo0010 14y ago
The H1-B is not tied to a single employer. But it only allows one month in case of lay off.
- malandrew 14y ago
  IMHO the H1-B visa should have a scheme like allowing 3 months for every every year worked. Since many tech jobs are filled for 2-4 years, that would give people 6-12 months to find something new. Out of curiosity, how much does it cost a company to takeover an existing visa?
- akurilin 14y ago
  Aren't there restrictions on switching companies once your GC application has been filed?
  - seppo0010 14y ago
    > If a foreign worker in H-1B status quits or is dismissed from the sponsoring employer, the worker must either apply for and be granted a change of status to another non-immigrant status, find another employer (subject to application for adjustment of status and/or change of visa), or leave the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
- ashayh 14y ago

dschiptsov 14y ago

How many years could pass, until they will figure out and develop a the same development process that brings Linux kernel and other wonders to us - a collaboration of engineers around the globe? But wait, that means all you need is gcc, emacs, git sometimes ssh and internet connection and Paypall (sic.) account? How could they sell all that disconnected from reality, bloated crap they produce, spending billions per year? The answer is quite easy - in order to get 200+k salaries and bonuses managers must maintain this bloated hierarchy and fabric-style sweatshops. Otherwise, who needs them? But the real question is - why we still care about MS? Who cares about old Nokia phones or Delphi or Java or things like Novell Netware?))

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

All the political chestbeating -protecting America against foreign labor - seems pretty silly when discussing skilled jobs like software. Its like, you're in a lifeboat and trying to get to shore and 3 rowers short. People are clamoring to get into your boat - first thing, you ask them what country they're from? WTF? Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program. Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers. Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but this conversation keeps coming up.

malandrew 14y ago

What do people think about making companies pay a significant premium salary (25%) to H1-B visa holders over US citizens? Seems like this would allay concerns over companies using H1-B visas to keep salaries down. Basically companies would use H1-B visas when an equivalent people cannot be hired domestically. If this approach works then maybe eliminating caps is possible, since it should be a somewhat self-correcting system.